David Robertson battles a staircase while other players nurse their respective wounds.

David Robertson, New York Yankees (Right Mid-Foot Sprain)
Not all injuries occur on the baseball field. Robertson was moving boxes, missed a step, and fell down a flight of stairs. He went for an x-ray Wednesday night; the result was negative. An MRI was used to confirm a mid-foot sprain, but Robertson needed further tests, including a CT scan and a weight-bearing x-ray.

This combination of testing raises the concern for a Lisfranc injury, the same one that felled Chien-Ming Wang in 2008. The CT can provide a very detailed picture of that joint, including a 3-D reconstruction. The standing x-ray is the tip-off, though. The MRI reveals a mid-foot sprain in severe Lisfranc injuries, while the CT may or may not reveal a fracture in the area. The standing x-ray most likely won’t show a fracture, but it will show if there is any increased space between the bones, indicative of instability in the area. When there is instability, there is a significant risk of severe long-term damage if the area does not heal through conservative measures or surgery. Without knowing the results of all of the tests, we cannot definitively say surgery is necessary.

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Should dedicated pinch-hitters like Matt Stairs be consigned to the Smoky Burgess Shale?

The latest news from Nats camp is that Matt Stairsappears set to crack the team's Opening Day roster, which comes as welcome news to those who prefer to take their players like they take their bench coaches: old, overweight, and rarely sighted outside of the dugout. Stairs played in 78 games for the Padres last season, coming to the plate just 111 times, predominantly in a pinch-hitting capacity; this made him the most sparingly used of any player to crack that many box scores. In four of those games, he earned his meal money merely by forcing a pitching change, giving way to another pinch-hitter and reclaiming his spot on the bench after being announced. So far this spring, he has characteristically received only 17 at-bats in his 12 games, but—also true to form—he has done quite a bit with his limited opportunities, recording six hits (three for extra bases) and adding two walks, enough to convince the Nats that the dedicated pinch-hitter is still worth carrying.

As Stairs prepares to enter his age-43 season (and his 19th in the majors), it's worth wondering whether we will (or should) see another player like him. The Canadian’s career has been improbable in a number of ways: for one thing, he didn’t play a full season in the majors until reaching the age of 30, the kind of late start that doesn’t often augur great longevity. For most of his career, “well-rounded” has been an accurate descriptor of Stairs' physique, but not his game. However, he began his professional baseball life in the Expos' system as an infielder, of all things, spending time at second, third, and short, something that—to those familiar with his play in later years—might come as a shock on par with the discovery that one's stodgy mom and dad dropped acid at Woodstock.